On 14 Jan , at 13:00:33, Mark Goodge wrote: > On 14/01/2011 10:24, Francis Irving wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 08:58:44AM +0000, Mark Goodge wrote: >>> >>> Secondly, and a point that's explicitly referred to in the press >>> release, is that the government wants to find a way to monetise all >>> the data that's going to be given away for free. The suggestion >>> seems to be that they want private sector investment, although it's >>> not clear what form that will take. I can think of three possible >>> routes this could take, which, from a user's perspective, are good, >>> neutral and bad respectively. >> >> What are they? > > Well, the simplest is that the government could invite private sector > sponsorship of data that's currently available - the government gets the > money, the sponsor gets the publicity. Or, for that matter, it could simply > sell advertising on the PDC website. I think that's neutral, I have no > particular objection to advertising or sponsorship per se provided it doesn't > have any editorial effect, so to speak. > > The second is that the government could ask commercial organisations to stump > up the cost of providing data that currently isn't available for free, either > because it costs too much to collate or because it's currently a revenue > generator and the government doesn't want to lose that. Again, this would be > a kind of sponsorship deal, with the commercial sponsor getting nothing > specific to them in return other than publicity - although they would, of > course benefit from the release of the data along with everyone else. I think > that would be broadly beneficial, especially if it results in the opening up > of significant additional data. The downside is the risk that the lack of > sponsorship might be used as an excuse for not providing data that otherwise > could have been. > > The final possibility, and the one that worries me most, is that commercial > organisations could be invited to sponsor the cost of releasing new datasets > on the understanding that they would have a monopoly on some or all aspects > of its use. That would clearly be undesirable from an open data perspective.
But would be return to the long term mean. Or at least, the policy of the last Conservative government. Stef > > Mark > -- > http://mark.goodge.co.uk > http://www.ratemysupermarket.com > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/stefan%40whitelabel.org -- /* Stefan Magdalinski +27 82 0431230 (SA) * +254 710 103500 (KE) PLS UPDATE* smagdali (IM/twitter/flickr/dopplr/skype/etc) */ _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
